


The McCall Home for Wayward Youngsters

by Reiven



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Good Parent Melissa McCall, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Pack Mom Melissa McCall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 18:17:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12940971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reiven/pseuds/Reiven
Summary: (and other Supernatural Creatures) Melissa McCall is a mother. The fact that only one of her kids came from her womb doesn't matter, they're her kids in all the ways that matter the most.





	The McCall Home for Wayward Youngsters

**Author's Note:**

> Written for @liveandletrain for the @teenwolfexchange who wanted something about **Melissa McCall and the baby betas.**

_Stiles was the first._

It wasn’t something that happened overnight, it was more of a gradual progression that she came to notice. The longer periods his mom spent in the hospital the more frequently she’d find him and Scott in a tangle of limbs, snoring, drooling slightly in their sleep sprawled one on top of the other in Scott’s bed. Eventually it became almost a habit to put out two plates instead of one before she left for work. On the rare occasions that Stiles ended up not sleeping over, she’d pack up the uneaten food for Scott to take to him to school or occasionally to the hospital where he’d be spending his nights instead.

Sometimes the food would go untouched; when Stiles could barely tear his eyes away from the wall he’d been staring blankly at for hours. When that happened, Melissa would send Scott out of the room to get Stiles something to drink from the vending machine; she knew he never got further than out the door, instead, slumping against the wall soundlessly, leaving her and Stiles to their privacy. In those moments, Melissa would reach an arm across Stiles’s shoulders, gently rubbing her hand up and down the length of his arm before pulling him close to her, letting him sob out his fear and his sorrow into her chest.

He hid his grief and his mourning well behind humour and jokes, but Melissa could always see straight through it.

The first set of their house keys he had she’d made for him herself and quietly slipped into his pocket when she hugged him before he left.  

Often, on the days when she’d be home late from work after working a triple shift just so she’d be able to put food on the table and keep the roof over their heads, she could hear the sound of shuffling in the lawn outside Scott’s window and the less than discrete muttered cursing of someone scaling up the side of their wall. It would usually end with the sound of a body crashing to the floor upstairs and Scott’s fervent hushing and the eventual sound of muffled laughter that would float down like a birdsong to Melissa’s ears.

She didn’t give Stiles a copy of their house keys expecting him to actually use it. She gave it to him so that he’d know that he was welcome in their house _always_.

_Allison was the second._

Melissa had a fondness for Allison from the first moment she met her. She was kind and respectful and smart and she also gorgeous. Scott really struck gold with that one, Melissa thought often.

But Melissa was a realist. After everything she’d been through in her life, she had to be. So she knew that if something seemed too good to be true, it probably was. And the fact had never been proven more right than in the case of the Argents.

Her son was a werewolf.

Just thinking the words drove home what an utterly bizarre turn her life had ended up taking; even taking into account her summer off during her third year of college that she spent hitchhiking across the country and ended up having an incredible one night stand with the single cutest guy she’d ever seen in her life. Once again, everything that seemed too good to be true always ended up being just that. The guy turned out to be some weirdo travelling with his father and younger brother in a badass looking car that had an arsenal in the trunk.

Melissa couldn’t have packed up her bags and skedaddled out of town faster if she tried.

Her werewolf son’s girlfriend turned out to be a werewolf _hunter_. Not only that, but she also came from a _long line_ of werewolf hunters, and if that wasn’t karma at work being an utter bitch, then Melissa was actually living in an alternate universe where zombies had taken over the world.

She gladly became the source of comfort for Allison when her mom died. Melissa had no lost love for the woman after everything she did to Scott and everything she almost did to her family. But she was still Allison’s mother, and Melissa wouldn’t even try to imagine a world in which it was Scott suffering through the same kind of loss, being offered empty words and useless reassurance when the only thing they truly needed was the feel of a mother’s comforting arms holding them close and wiping away their tears.

But through it all, their relationship – then friendship persevered and stayed strong – until it didn’t.

When Allison died, Melissa realized just how _real_ the situation was, and how serious. It was easy to get caught up in the moment; to hear the words werewolf and kitsune and supernatural and just be like ‘ _Sure_ ’.

But when Scott walked in through the door that night, his hands and clothes saturated with blood and the look of absolute devastation on his face, Melissa just _knew_. She didn’t say anything, she just gathered her son up in her arms and let him cry into her chest.

That was the first time she realized that this really was the end of their innocence. She knew it was coming as it inevitably came for everyone eventually. It came for her late, not until she realized that the prince charming she married wasn’t much of a prince and he ended up not being all that charming either. But she had wanted to protect Scott from experiencing that for as long as she could.

That night she realized that for the first time in her life, she failed as a parent.

_Isaac was the third._

Melissa was used to seeing a lot of things, a lot of terrible things and terrible situations passing through the hospital doors daily.

The moment she laid eyes on Isaac _she knew_ ; the way he’d flinch back whenever she was too quick in reaching for something in his vicinity. The way his eyes would shift to the floor almost in submission and the way his back would hunch down trying to make himself appear as small as he could whenever she was too angry and too vicious yelling into the phone receiver at the dumbass on the other end of the line.

The way he slept curled up on the floor instead of the bed during his first few nights there.

She never mentioned it and she never called attention to it. She let him do what he needed to do to feel comfortable; she just made sure to vacuum and mop the floor as clean as she could make it. She couldn’t stop him from sleeping there, but she could at least make sure that the surface he was sleeping on was clean enough to eat off of.

A week to the day he moved in, Melissa found him sprawled out on the mattress, his long limbs hanging off the sides and his head half hidden under the pillow instead of on it. She quietly tiptoed in and tucked the spare wool blanket around him and walked out, careful not to wake him out of his slumber.

Melissa lost three things the day Allison died.

She lost Allison. She lost Scott’s innocence, and she lost Isaac.

But she powered through regardless. _She had to_. She didn’t just have herself to carry forward and support, she still had her son; she had Stiles and their friends and Chris who was inconsolable over the death of both his wife and daughter. She had the sheriff who needed her to be strong for him to be strong, because the kids may have had the pack, but Melissa, Chris and Noah really only had each other; the only people who truly understood what each other were going through and the pain that came along with raising a child in such a terrible, cruel world.

 _Liam was the fourth_.

Scott has had many betas through the years, at least she saw all of them as such and it was obvious that was the way they saw themselves as well.

But Liam was his first.

Melissa knew from the moment he came to her, his eyes red rimmed and damp, his body language almost drenched in guilt – that he didn’t have a choice. He didn’t have to say as much because she knew her son. She knew the trouble he went through when he was turned and she knew how difficult it was for him to accept what had happened; to accept what he was. She knew how afraid he was that she wouldn’t accept him, that she would stop loving him and it was that fear that she could still sometimes see in his eyes, hovering just in the background of his gaze.

She knew he would never wish that feeling on anyone else.

But it happened, Scott did to Liam what had been done to him and no matter the reason, Melissa knew he would never truly absolve himself of the guilt.

She could tell right off the bat that his bond and his relationship with Liam was different than the one he had with the others. There was an aura around them, a feeling that was projected that was akin to the bond between a father and son, but one that wasn’t forged by blood or by relation, but instead was bound by something greater than that.

If anything were to ever happen to Liam, Melissa knew that Scott would never recover from it.

Liam came into their home and not unlike the way Stiles had made himself completely comfortable; from the moment he stepped through the door, his presence in the house just felt absolutely right.

_Theo was the fifth._

Melissa had strong mixed feelings about Theo from the very beginning; from the first moment she laid eyes on him after Liam pulled him out of hell.

He killed her son. He almost tore their pack to pieces and he wreaked havoc at every corner from the moment he stepped back into town.

But at the same time, Melissa couldn’t stop seeing a much younger face staring back at her when she turned to look at him. She remembered him as a young boy when he lived in Beacon Hills all those years ago. She remembered his frequent trips to the ER because of his asthma. The memory stood out to her because she used to reflect on how much he reminded her of Scott.

But where Scott had her at his side whenever an asthma attack was particularly vicious, Theo only had his sister who would stay by his side through the treatment, and a father who would stomp in, disgruntled and complaining, to sign the release forms only because he had to.

Even when Melissa was at her angriest, the sight of her son’s bloodied body lying limp in her arms still so fresh in her memory, she still couldn’t find it in her to turn him away and throw him out.

Instead she’d sit him down opposite her at the dinner table and make him hot chocolate.

The utterly baffled look on his face was rewarding enough to her.

Melissa didn’t fail to notice the way Liam would come by more often since Theo started staying with them, and the way they would both suspiciously disappear together once the attention of the room was no longer focused on them. But that was a story for another time.

It was hard sometimes, watching these kids that she’d grown to care about come and go – and die, which sadly happened more times than she wanted. She remembered comforting one of the twin alphas after the death of his brother and Melissa didn’t think she’d ever seen grief as potent as she did in that moment.

It was hard sometimes, but it was rewarding most of the time.

Theo was the latest, but Melissa knew that he wouldn’t be the last, and she knew that she would gladly accept every single one of them with open arms, over and over again.

**The end.**

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of an extension of the plot-line and characterization I already have for Melissa in Heart of the Heartless. The fic title is also actually the title of chapter 9, I just elaborated more on it. Also I hope you caught the small cameo I secretly inserted.


End file.
